farlymac
PF McFarland
Don, you can always start out small, and get one of these for 35mm.
Bellows_35mm_4 by P F McFarland, on Flickr
PF
Bellows_35mm_4 by P F McFarland, on Flickr
PF
Curious, but what does bending the bellows do?
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rogue_designer
Reciprocity Failure
It is a nice camera. Horseman LS or LX - I have the LX and it's been a fantastic shooter for the past 15 years.
Vince Lupo
Whatever
I'm sure it is -- looks like it has a lot of great movements to it. Can you interchange the bellows (like for a bag bellows)? Revolving back? Can you add extensions to the monorail?
rogue_designer
Reciprocity Failure
Yes on all counts. I keep the bag bellows on mine for 90% of my uses.
Muggins
Junk magnet
Roger Hicks
Veteran
Dear Adrian,
The KI Monobar was made by Kennedy Instruments, who also made other things for Ilford. It's not clear whether they were (as some claim) a subsidiary of Ilford.
http://www.photomemorabilia.co.uk/Ilford/KI_Monobar.html
Cheers,
R.
goamules
Well-known
Roger's page shows some of the common purposes for movements. In layman's terms those are to fix perspective so that architecture looks correct, and doesn't have the converging sides when pointing a camera up. Another is to get the foreground in focus, along with distant mountains, even without being stopped down much. You can also get both eyes in sharp focus of a model sitting at a 45 degree angle to the camera, even at very short dept of field settings. You can "move" the image out into the street like Roger shows. With still lifes, you can adjust the focus plane to be anything you want, to line up with the objects on the table. Or you can unfocus other objects.
Basically, with movements you can easily set up the shot exactly like you want, so your negative is perfect, and print ready with no fancy Photoshop post processing. Remember the time people shot film, then printed in a wet darkroom? Before computers? You could do none of the above without cameras with movements. So besides extremely better resolution, that's why large format cameras have movements. And yes, they are used, they're not just "for looks". ....wait...they are. For the look of the shot.
A video is worth a thousand words. Watch this and you'll instantly see the uses: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JU-eHpk97Y
Basically, with movements you can easily set up the shot exactly like you want, so your negative is perfect, and print ready with no fancy Photoshop post processing. Remember the time people shot film, then printed in a wet darkroom? Before computers? You could do none of the above without cameras with movements. So besides extremely better resolution, that's why large format cameras have movements. And yes, they are used, they're not just "for looks". ....wait...they are. For the look of the shot.
A video is worth a thousand words. Watch this and you'll instantly see the uses: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JU-eHpk97Y
drew.saunders
Well-known
20mm of front rise plus 30mm of rear fall means the subject is quite a bit higher than the camera. Not an unusual situation.
A bit over 20mm of front shift means the subject is to the right of the camera and either the camera can't be moved to the right, or there's something directly in front of the camera that you want to "shoot around." Front shift is one way to have a mirror in or near the center of the frame without the camera showing up in the mirror. Although you can, in theory, just scoot the tripod a bit left or right most of the time, it can be more convenient or precise to use shift if you find you want just a wee bit of change in composition.
12 degrees of front downward tilt means the subject is not parallel to the film plane, but the photographer wants it to be in focus (or they're using the annoyingly-inaccurately-named "tilt/shift" effect to throw a subject selectively out of focus, which is just tilt, not shift!) Scheimpflug can be confusing stuff!
I don't know that I've used movements this extreme in the field, but I've certainly gotten close, and have used combinations of rise/fall and shift with tilt. I've rarely used tilt and swing together, as that tends to confuse the hell out of me. My Ebony is a field camera, so doesn't have quite as much range in its movements (and only has rear rise, not fall), but using movements is quite common with view cameras. I almost always use front rise or fall for every image, as it's easier to have the camera at my face and not move the tripod up or down or tilt the tripod head if my subject is higher or lower than I am.
A bit over 20mm of front shift means the subject is to the right of the camera and either the camera can't be moved to the right, or there's something directly in front of the camera that you want to "shoot around." Front shift is one way to have a mirror in or near the center of the frame without the camera showing up in the mirror. Although you can, in theory, just scoot the tripod a bit left or right most of the time, it can be more convenient or precise to use shift if you find you want just a wee bit of change in composition.
12 degrees of front downward tilt means the subject is not parallel to the film plane, but the photographer wants it to be in focus (or they're using the annoyingly-inaccurately-named "tilt/shift" effect to throw a subject selectively out of focus, which is just tilt, not shift!) Scheimpflug can be confusing stuff!
I don't know that I've used movements this extreme in the field, but I've certainly gotten close, and have used combinations of rise/fall and shift with tilt. I've rarely used tilt and swing together, as that tends to confuse the hell out of me. My Ebony is a field camera, so doesn't have quite as much range in its movements (and only has rear rise, not fall), but using movements is quite common with view cameras. I almost always use front rise or fall for every image, as it's easier to have the camera at my face and not move the tripod up or down or tilt the tripod head if my subject is higher or lower than I am.
sevo
Fokutorendaburando
The amount is not that unusual. But the direction of the downward tilt opposed to the upward rise is - that combination is highly unlikely, almost impossible unless you wanted to do a artificially low DOF picture, Burnett style, of something stuck to a ceiling.
panerai
Well-known
Interesting read, but still not buying one 🙂
Sadly my CL sits on the shelf as I tend to grab my Panasonic LX3
Not much use for a camera like this in my area. Dragging one downtown and set up not my style.
No open fields or majestic vistas to photograph. Grand nieces and nephews don't hold still long enough for the LX3, so forget about holding still for LF.
Created a good conversation though
Thanks
DON
Sadly my CL sits on the shelf as I tend to grab my Panasonic LX3
Not much use for a camera like this in my area. Dragging one downtown and set up not my style.
No open fields or majestic vistas to photograph. Grand nieces and nephews don't hold still long enough for the LX3, so forget about holding still for LF.
Created a good conversation though
Thanks
DON
Ronald M
Veteran
This is cool stuff I miss since I went totally digital. I have adapted 28 and 35 Leica PC to Nikon , but there are no swing controls to adjust focus plane. Digital darkroom does provide some interesting adjustments to compensate like focus stacking.
Gone are the nice quiet hours in the dark room.
Gone are the nice quiet hours in the dark room.
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